A century ago, in a quiet village in Hungary, a group of women launched a crime ring that spiraled into one of the deadliest mass poisonings in history. To understand what happened and to uncover the lives behind the headlines Hope pieced together archival newspapers, court documents, police records, and the vital work of historians, sociologists, and psychologists, diving deep into the truth behind this extraordinary event. Based on the same story Klára has made the documentary Angelmakers in 2005.In the village of Nagyrév, Hungary the Women are not fine. Midwife Zsuzsanna Fazekas was more than a caretaker, she was a confidante. She helped poor women give birth, she assisted them with abortions and she listened. Their stories were the same: husbands who drank, who beat them, who made their lives unbearable. In response, Auntie Zsuzsi asked one question: "Why bother with them?" Her solution: arsenic. Soon, women began mixing this concoction, made by dissolving flypaper in water, into their husbands’ porridge, stews, and brandy. Over the next twenty - according to some estimates, up to 300 people in the region were murdered. Why did they do it? How did these murders spin out of control? How did these women get away with their crimes for two decades?Hope Reese is a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary and writes for the New York Times, the Atlantic, Vox, and for dozens of other publications. Her work spans a range of subjects –– from culture to politics, to feminism and technology –– with a focus on features, profiles and interviews. She is a featured author in the Verso Books collection Where Freedom Starts.Previously, Hope was a staff writer at TechRepublic (CBS Interactive). She taught journalism at Indiana University, Southeast. Hope earned her Master’s in Journalism from Harvard Extension School while working for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. The Women Are Not Fine is her first book.Klára Trencsényi is a freelance director and cinematographer committed to creative and social documentaries. She graduated from the Hungarian Film Academy in Budapest as Director of Photography. Prior to her first feature length, award winning documentary, Train to Adulthood, she directed two mid-length documentaries (Corvin Variations, 2011, Birds Way, 2009). Klara has worked in many international productions as director of photography with Dutch, American and Hungarian directors, and won several awards.She has organized the first creative documentary development workshop and pitching forum in Budapest in 2010 and led courses of documentary filmmaking at the Central European University, Budapest. Since 2017 she is lecturer at the Budapest based Metropolitan University, teaching documentary writing, directing and film presentation techniques.
